We would like to thank all of the organizations, government ministries and individuals who responded to our requests for information and material. For their assistance and financial support we would like to acknowledge Patty Holmes and Status of Women Canada, BC/Yukon Region. Finally, this report would not have been possible without the fine work and support of our research assistants, particularly Marina Morrow for her extensive work in coordinating the project, Susan Chambers for her comprehensive work in annotating, Larry Buhagiar for providing valuable leads to additional resources, and Patricia Kachuk for her annotations of the criminal justice system references. Special thanks also to our volunteers, Nadia Vergalito, Michelle Dwyer, Patti McVeigh, Andrea Wareham and Yasmin Vishram who gave their time to identifying references and helping to prepare the annotations.

INTRODUCTION

INTIMATE VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN: A COLLECTION OF BRITISH COLUMBIA-BASED RESOURCES, 1994-1997

Over the past twenty-five years in North America, the prevalence of violence against women, especially that perpetrated by male intimates, has come to be recognized as a serious social issue. The work, in particular, of feminist anti-violence activists and front-line workers has resulted in a deeper understanding of the gendered nature of violence as well as of the social, political, and economic implications for women and society as a whole. The recognition of women's shared vulnerability to male violence across race, class, sexuality, age, ability, and culture has led anti-violence advocates to seek explanations based on broad social analyses of patriarchal structures and the role of male dominance in the abuse of women. In addition to these important theoretical contributions, anti-violence activists have been responsible for the development of service networks designed specifically to address the needs of women. Despite the extensive and comprehensive work of front-line advocates and researchers, and the substantive legal and social reforms that have followed, the incidence of violence against women does not appear to have decreased. In British Columbia, the recent spate of murders of women, in some cases along with their close relatives, friends or children, confirms this fact. In the face of this, it is especially critical for advocates, service providers, researchers, and professionals to share resources and findings from their work so that comprehensive and effective strategies can be developed that will assist in ending violence against women.

In 1994, a British Columbia resource inventory on violence against women was prepared called, Stopping the Violence Against Women in Relationships: A Resource Inventory for British Columbia.⁽¹⁾ Since this comprehensive resource was produced, many more research reports, needs assessments and curriculum materials have been developed. The current annotated bibliography is meant specifically to document research materials related to adult women's experiences of male intimate violence that have been produced in British Columbia since 1994. In compiling the resources, we were interested especially in community-based research and research which adopts feminist frameworks for understanding violence against women. As this annotated bibliography is part of a larger policy research project being conducted by the FREDA Centre for Research on Violence against Women and Children, we paid special attention to materials that have implications for social policy development in the area of violence against women. In addition, we have gathered academic articles on the subject and some clinical research, not all of which utilize feminist frameworks in their analyses.

In gathering our resources a number of methods were used:

• Letters were sent to anti-violence organizations across BC to solicit community-based research reports, needs assessments, and curriculum materials.
• Advertisements of the project were posted in various anti-violence newsletters and feminist newspapers (i.e., Kinesis, The BC Institute on Family Violence Newsletter, The BC/Yukon Society of Transition Houses Newsletter).
• Relevant materials were gathered from other research institutes, for example, the BC Institute on Family Violence, and the Justice Institute of BC.
• Information about projects that have been government funded was solicited from all provincial government ministries and from Status of Women Canada.
• Extensive searches for academic material were carried out through available university databases and Internet searches.⁽²⁾
• All violence research that has been supported by the Social Sciences Humanities and Research Council was gathered.
• Academic researchers in BC universities & colleges were contacted for materials.

The material in this bibliography is organized into subject areas. The broad subject areas include; criminal justice, civil/family law, health, economic/social welfare, housing, education/curriculum, community-based programs and services and literature reviews. Some of these broad subject areas are further divided into sub-categories. Although some of the material could fall under one or more category, we have not cross-listed these. Instead, an attempt has been made in each case to categorize the material according to its predominant themes.

^2. The following databases were searched: Sociofile, Medline, Criminal Justice Abstracts, Public Affairs Information Service, National Criminal Justice Reference Centre, Modern Languages, Index to Canadian Periodical List, Canadian Politics Bibliography, Humanities and Social Sciences Index, Canadian Legal Literature, Canadian Aboriginal Literature, Canadian Cultural Bibliography, Nexus Lexus, Psychology Information and the Psychology Abstracts.